Musicology graduate students

Brian Casey
Historical Musicology
Brian.casey@colorado.edu

Brian Casey is a jazz bassist, educator and researcher based in Colorado. Casey serves as associate professor of academic jazz at the University of Northern Colorado and earned a DMA in jazz studies from the University of Colorado Boulder where he taught courses in humanities, jazz studies and American music. Prior to moving to Colorado, Casey earned a MM in nazz studies from the University of North Texas where he played with the Grammy-nominated One O’Clock Lab Band and served as a teaching fellow in jazz bass under the direction of Professor of Bass Lynn Seaton. Originally from the Pacific Northwest, Casey has performed and recorded with Eric Skye, Pink Martini, Weber Iago, Henry Butler, Anson Wright, Robert Johnson, Lillian Boutté and many others. Casey has presented original research in jazz-related fields at many national and international conferences including those of the College Music Society, the Jazz Education Network and the International Society of Bassists. He has recently published the entry for Miles Davis in the “Oxford Online Bibliographies in Music,” and a chapter on post war traditions Jerry Tolson’s textbook “African American Music: History and Heritage” published by Great River Learning. Casey’s research interests also include the intersection of jazz and American literature, politics, society and the role of jazz in the civil rights struggle in America, as well as jazz as a cultural phenomenon in New Orleans. 

Amir Davarzani
Ethnomusicology
Amir.davarzani@colorado.edu

Amir Davarzani, born and raised in Sabzevar, Iran, embarked on his musical journey at age 13, immersing himself in classical and flamenco guitar, later transitioning to the electric guitar. 

Davarzani earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in educational management, with his master’s thesis interweaving pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) with music. In 2020, he authored a book blending thrash metal guitar techniques with innovative pedagogical approaches.

Davarzani’s primary passion revolves around heavy metal music and its subgenres, encompassing thrash, death, nu and hardcore, alongside exploring their historical and societal implications. In 2023, Davarzani was invited to speak at Loyola University in New Orleans, where he discussed Slipknot’s music. Recently, he talked about the birth of heavy metal at the American Musicological Society conference.

Beyond music, Davarzani indulges in movies and explores various topics on the internet.

Jameson Foster
Ethnomusicology
Jameson.Foster@colorado.edu

Jameson Foster is an ethnomusicology PhD student at CU Boulder exploring the ways in which music is used to construct identity in and of the Nordic countries, including traditional music styles, heavy metal, and the growing pagan music scene arising out of Viking market gatherings in Scandinavia. Jameson's current focus is on the ethnographic study of pagan music festivals as counter-memory in both Scandinavia and the United States, including Midgardsblot (Norway), Cascadian Midsummer (Washington), and Fire in the Mountains (Montana). Jameson has a complimentary passion in ecological ethic and ecomusicology, with much of his work reflecting concern for how music works with or against attitudes of environmentalism, particularly how animist cosmology manifests in contemporary Nordic and pagan music practice.

Jameson’s teaching experience includes Music Appreciation, Vikings, and Norse Mythology here at CU, as well as 20th Century Music and Western Art Music at Johns Hopkins and Peabody Conservatory during his master's degree when working on his thesis focused on Edvard Grieg's influence on Belle Epoque Paris. He has presented research at the Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study, the Rocky Mountain Chapter of the Society for Ethnomusicology, and the American Musicological Society Rocky Mountain Chapter on topics including: “Performing Nordic Animism in Wardruna’s Grá”, “Down to the River to Play: Animist Cosmology in Norwegian Fiddling”, and “’To Yzeland, and the farthest Thule's Frost’: Politics of Race and Climate in Dryden and Purcell’s King Arthur”.

Taylor Howard
Ethnomusicology
taylor.howard-1@colorado.edu 

Taylor Howard is a first-year PhD student in Ethnomusicology at the University of Colorado Boulder. As a former classically trained clarinetist, her intersectionality as a woman of color who participated in the European art music and listens to alternative music has frequently been challenged about what she “should” study or music she “should” listen to, particularly by her Black peers. This battle from her personal life has manifested into her interest in examining the consequences of Black conservatism on alternative culture and rock music, breeding feelings of rejection and isolation from inter-communal conflicts. The extreme surveillance on the Black community has perpetuated generational trauma and coping mechanisms of assimilation to Whiteness. This rejection of Blackness, including popular music aesthetics, has removed newer generations of Black youth from their cultural capital, dismissing rock as “White music”. Howard wants to investigate rock music and alternative culture’s healing nature to reconnect Black isolated youths to their authenticity without parallel association to the manipulated image of Whiteness in popular music. Black rockers have and continue to reclaim their aesthetics through socio-cultural associations through their lyrics and sonic qualities throughout rock’s evolution.

Ubochi Igbokwe​
Ethnomusicology
Ubochi.Igbokwe@colorado.edu

Ubochi Igbokwe is a fourth-year doctoral student studying Ethnomusicology at the University of Colorado Boulder. She earned a Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in vocal music performance from the University of Uyo, Nigeria. Igbokwe has taken on Instructorship and Teaching Assistantship roles at the College of Music, a Graduate Assistant at the American Music Research Center (AMRC), and is currently a Graduate Fellow at the Center for African and African American Studies (CAAAS), and a student member of the Society for Ethnomusicology Council. Her research interests in performance imagery, masquerade music festivals, number symbolism, and spirituality in musical arts led to extensive research in Ndoki Igbo masquerade music. These research experiences in Igbo and African masquerade music and festivals have led to numerous international conference presentations in the United States, New Zealand, Portugal, Thailand, Ireland, and Nigeria.

Igbokwe’s article titled “The Significance of Ìrìráábú Musical Satire in the Ékpè Dance Festival Amongst the Obohia-Ndoki People of Nigeria” was published in the 2018 edition of the Yearbook for Traditional Music. She also co-authored three articles published in the 2017, 2018, and 2019 editions of the Journal of Nigerian Music Education (JONMED) and the Journal of Association of Nigerian Musicologists (JANIM). JONMED's article “Nigerian Music Education: Emerging Issues in Career Placement” illustrates the significance of functional music education and versatility and how these qualities contribute to the preparedness of music graduates in Nigeria for diverse professional opportunities within the music industry and beyond. Articles in JANIM, “Ìtú Ōtítí: Music and Gender in the Second Funeral Rites in Ndoki,” highlight Ìtú Ōtítí as a post- entombment funerary rites performance in honor of a deceased noblewoman and mother as she transits into ancestral bliss; “Music and Mathematics: Number Allegory in Ndoki Musical Arts” brings to the fore symbolism of numbers in the spiritual and sociocultural life of the Ndoki people of Southeastern, Nigeria.

Igbokwe’s inclination for new knowledge inspired her to find a new frontier and begin an examination of Igbo-African expressive cultures in pre-dissertation research trips to Japan in the summers of 2023 and 2024. As part of the inaugural class of CAAAS Graduate Fellows, she presents her research at the 2024 – 2025 academic year monthly graduate student conference here at CU Boulder.

Isaac Johnson
Historical Musicology
kajo4320@colorado.edu

Karl Isaac Johnson has a particular interest in the history of Gregorian Chant in North America, spanning from colonial-mission encounters to the present day. His academic work, which includes publications in Culture and Religion, Glossolalia, Antiphon, Journal of the Southwest, Sacred Music, and Études Grégoriennes, and presentations at meetings of the International Congress on Medieval Studies, American Musicological Society (twice), American Academy of Religion (twice), Society for Christian Scholarship in Music, and Society for Catholic Liturgy, has spanned research on Hispano and Native American Catholic devotionalism in New Mexico and Arizona, Mohawk First Nation Catholicism historically and in the modern day, French Romantic and Contemporary organ music, the Old Hispanic Rite especially in comparison with the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church, ethnographic studies of modern-day Catholic liturgy and music in the U.S., and the origins of heavy metal. He also hopes to study the music of the Penitente societies of New Mexico and to explore the social politics of American country, bluegrass, and "old time" music. He hopes to write a dissertation on the creation and use of post-medieval chant expressions in early modern North America, particularly in French-Canadian and Jesuit Mission contexts.

Isaac has enjoyed a successful career as a church music director, organist, choral conductor, tenor, and composer, and has performed organ recitals in cathedrals, churches, and conferences across the United States and in Canada. He lives in Longmont with his wife, three children and cat, and serves as organist for St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church in Longmont, Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church in Denver, and St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Chapel in Boulder.

Laura Klein
Historical Musicology
Laura.Klein@colorado.edu

Laura Klein is a third-year PhD pre-candidate studying historical and performance practice musicology. Her research on British music of the long 18th century centers around the music collection of Jane Austen and the impact music and playing had on her writing as a proto-feminist author. Klein founded The Jane Austen Playlist in 2019, a research and performance program featuring music from Austen’s music manuscripts paired with dramatized narrations from her writings. She is a resident pianist for Jane Austen’s House in Chawton, Hampshire, UK, where she frequently performs in virtual and live events.

An active performer, educator, and researcher, Klein earned her Master of Music in Piano Pedagogy and Performance from Westminster Choir College with high honors and her Bachelor of Music in Piano Performance from Mars Hill University with a cumulative 4.0 GPA. She is alumna of Brevard Music Center’s Summer Festival and the Juilliard School’s International Scholar Laureate Program. She has performed throughout the USA, Canada, Austria, the UK, and the Czech Republic. Former faculty at Westminster Choir College, the American Boychoir School and Walla Walla University, she currently serves on faculty at Colorado Christian University’s School of Music and teaches for the College of Music at CU Boulder. In spring 2025, she will complete requirements to earn CU Boulder’s College of Music Certificate in Music Theory.

Recent publications include “Drama in Words and Music: Jane Austen Sings” (co-authored with Dr. Gillian Dooley) in Persuasions Online 45 (2024) and “Pride and Prejudice and the Piano: Pianofortes and Music in Jane Austen’s Life and Work” in Persuasions 45 (2023), Jane Austen

Society of North America’s two peer-reviewed journals. More information about Klein’s work can be found at www.laurakleinpiano.com.

When she is not teaching, playing her 1908 Steinway grand, or deep-diving down rabbit holes of research, Klein spends her time reading Jane Austen (again), drinking tea, and hiking or traveling with her husband, Matthew, and their daughter, Alyssa.

Johnette Martin
Ethnomusicology
Johnette.Martin@colorado.edu

ᎦᎵᎡᎵ ᏥᏕᎾᎸ, O Johnette Makamaeakahaio’kaho’oponoponookapunahelekupuo’kaaina Martin ko'u inoa. No Makawao koʻu ahupuaʻa a o Hāmākuapoko, Maui mai au. Noho wau i Kololako (Colorado). As an ᏣᎳᎩ and Kanaka Maoli, cis-gendered, heterosexual woman and musicologist, Johnette’s research interests range from film music to representation, misinformation, and identity in Indigenous music cultures, particularly of the Americas and Polynesia. Born and raised in Hawai’i Nei, she grew up immersed in traditional Native Hawaiian practices, once denied to her ancestors, including mea’ai, aloha ‘āina, spirituality, and mele (mele hula and mele oli). Being a musicologist is a passion that intensifies with her accomplishments in the scholarship and with the guidance of her fellow scholars and professors: past, present, and future. She started her collegiate music education with the goal of returning to her community to give back in the form of teaching academic art music. To this day, Johnette still aspires to contribute to her community as her kuleana or responsibility through teaching music and culture, but now including her Native Hawaiian and Cherokee cultures into the conversation of American Musicology. Her goals of inclusivity stretch from ethnic identity to gender, sexuality, and spiritual identity, i.e., the 2-spirited individual, pre-, and post-colonization. Johnette’s work also includes South Korean film music and pansori (South Korean folk music) as well as Mariachi vocals and pedagogy. 

As an undergraduate and a graduate master’s student, Johnette attended the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, successfully accumulating a BA in Music Education: Secondary Instrumental and an MA in Musicology, respectively, while volunteering for Nā Pua No’eau and Kamehameha Schools to aid in the cultural education of Native Hawaiian children. In her master’s program, she completed and defended her thesis with respect to feminism and film musicology, “Musical Aesthetics in Alex North’s Score for The Bad Seed.” Johnette has most recently worked as a teacher of Native Hawaiian culture at Mid-Pacific Institute, a private college prepatory K-12 school in Mānoa, Hawai’i. Johnette is currently in the Ph.D. Musicology program at the University of Colorado – Boulder and works in the Norlin Library / American Music Research Center music archives. ᏙᏓᏓᎪᎲᎢ. No ka lāhui.

Jessica Quah
Historical Musicology
Jessica.Quah@colorado.edu

Jessica Quah is a doctoral student in the musicology department at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where she has also instructed and assisted in a variety of music courses. She earned a MM degree in musicology from Rice University and has held teaching positions across the school and collegiate levels in Texas. Her master's thesis situated the Yellow River and Butterfly Lovers concerti within their respective historical and political contexts, with especial focus on the manifestation of musical hybridity through instrumentation and texture. Quah's research interests include both art and popular musics, and tend to involve intersections, particularly those of culture and literature; music and language; style, form, and dramaturgy. She has recently presented on the presence of tonal contour in Mandarin rap, as well as on the significance of texture and timbre in Chinese metal music. Her current work concerns adaptations of Chinese historical and mythological narratives for the Euro-American operatic stage.

Elizabeth Romero
Historical Musicology
elizabeth.romero@colorado.edu 

Elizabeth Romero is currently seeking a Ph.D. in Historical Musicology at CU Boulder. Her research interests include strategies of narrative in music, the piano music of Robert Schumann and Frederic Chopin, music and religion, and progressive rock. Her master’s thesis, “The Kansas Band’s Musical Depiction of Spiritual Quests” combines many of these research interests and analyzes five songs. She received a Master’s degree in music theory from the University of Northern Colorado, and she earned a Bachelor of Arts in music from Regis University.

It was however during her time at home where much of her music discoveries took place. She learned to play the piano at age two before she said her first word at age three, and she would often play whatever she heard, especially the music of Pink Floyd. One of her favorite activities is composing new music alongside her talented older sister. One of the experiences Elizabeth credits as an inspiration to her education is the myriad of conversations she would have with her father regarding the meaning of music, its lyrics, and how they relate to people’s experiences.

Brandon Stover
Ethnomusicology
Brandon.Stover@colorado.edu

Brandon Stover is a PhD candidate in Ethnomusicology. He is currently working on his dissertation titled Transmitting Neiro: Teaching Timbre and Tradition in Online Shakuhachi Lessons which looks into the transmission of the Japanese shakuhachi online and how such online interactions alter the pedagogy of the tradition. As a shakuhachi performer, he earned his first shihan menjō or teaching license to teach the Seien-ryu school of shakuhachi from his teacher in 2022. He has presented research at the Society for Ethnomusicology annual meeting, the Southwest Chapter of the Society of Ethnomusicology, the International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition, and Borders/Boundaries/Fronteras: Rethinking American Music, a symposium hosted by Americas: A Hemispheric Music Journal.

Stover has published in the Journal of Music, Health, and Wellbeing, Americas: A Hemispheric Music Journal, the Hakodate Shinbun, and has a forthcoming article in the collection Stories from the Field. He has served as the Vice President of the Graduate Musicology Society where he was in charge of the bi-yearly newsletter.

He holds a BM in music education from Millikin University and an MA in ethnomusicology from Goldsmiths, University of London. Before coming to Colorado, he was a middle school music (band/choir) and social science teacher for nine years in Illinois. In his free time, Stover enjoys playing board games and traveling with his wife, Emily, and their baby boy.

Brandon Swing
Historical Musicology
Brandon.Swing@colorado.edu

Brandon Swing is a PhD pre-candidate in ethnomusicology. He holds a BM in piano performance from Union University and a MM in piano performance and piano pedagogy from the University of Memphis. Swing’s interests concern video games as social media in childhood and adolescence, and video games as nostalgia later in adult life.

Jason Thompson
Historical Musicology
Jath6814@colorado.edu

Jason is a second-year PhD student in historical musicology. He received a BM in music history from the University of the Pacific and an MM in music from University of Northern Colorado. 

Thompson’s research interests include early music, music in early modern France, and gender and sexuality in music. While studying at University of the Pacific, Thompson worked on a reconstruction of some music in the Ballet Royale de la Nuit (1653) and wrote his capstone paper on Jean-Baptiste Lully’s setting of the Dies Irae sequence. His master’s thesis, “Queerness in French Baroque Opera: The Relationship Between Achilles and Patroclus in Lully’s Achille et Polyxène,” looks at the portrayal of the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus in Lully’s tragédie-lyrique Achille et Polyxène (1687). He presented his research on Achille et Polyxène at the Rocky Mountain Music Scholar’s Conference in 2022. 

In his free time, Thompson enjoys practicing harpsichord, designing and sewing clothes (historic and modern), going to museums and concerts and traveling with his partner, Jacob. 

Lydia Wagenknecht

Ethnomusicology
Lydia.Wagenknecht@colorado.edu

Lydia Wagenknecht (she/her) is a PhD candidate in ethnomusicology at the University of Colorado Boulder. A Fulbright Student and Fulbright-Hays fellow, her dissertation titled “Conciencias Antárticas: Music, Climate Change, and Polar Identities in Punta Arenas” examines intersections between climate change and music making in southern Chilean Patagonia. Her broader research interests include voice studies, ecofeminism, decolonial theory, activism, and public musicology

A Research Assistant at the American Music Research Center, Wagenknecht works on the NEH-funded “Soundscapes of the People” project in Pueblo, Colorado. She has also served as an Engaged Arts and Humanities Scholar, College of Music Lead Graduate Instructor, GPSG Music Senator, and president of the Graduate Musicology Society at CU Boulder. Currently, she works as the Student Relations Officer for the journal Rising Voices in Ethnomusicology. She received the Joann W. Kealiinohomoku Award for Excellence from the Southwest Chapter of the Society for Ethnomusicology in 2020. 

Wagenknecht holds a B.A. in Wide-Range Music Education (Choral/General Music) from Wisconsin Lutheran College. She has taught music students from early childhood through adults. In her free time, Wagenknecht serves as a church musician, trains for ultramarathons, and enjoys spending time with her husband (Austin) and dog (Panqueque).

Charles Wofford
Historical Musicology
Charles.Wofford@colorado.edu

Charles Wofford is a Ph.D. student in historical musicology and critical theory. He received his B.A. in Music from Northern Arizona University in 2012, where he studied classical guitar under Tom Sheeley, a student of Manuel Lopez Ramos and Patrick Read. Charles’ research interests include musical improvisation, music as a utopian practice, the history of radical thought, the Enlightenment, and the ideologies around “classic rock.” His dissertation examines discourses of improvisation in the Led Zeppelin fan base. Charles has presented on Led Zeppelin, improvisation, and listening at both regional and national conferences of the American Musicological Society. He also maintains an active practice in both electric and classical guitar.

In Fall 2022, Charles was elected president of the Graduate Musicology Society (GMS), a recognized student organization that promotes performances of and scholarship around music. As president, Charles works to fund graduate music scholars' conference expenses. He is also working to reform the bylaws, and has formalized record keeping practices.

Charles has also advocated for student interests in an activist capacity: in 2017 he rallied resistance to an “Alt-Right” presence on campus, and in 2022 publicly advocated for expanded library hours. In recognition of these efforts he was granted the Scholarship and Collegiality Excellence Award by the Graduate and Professional Student Government (GPSG) in Spring 2023.

In his free time Charles enjoys reading, attending concerts, and rotting his brain on YouTube. His favorite author is Victor Serge and his favorite musician is Eric Clapton.

Read more about the recent activities of our graduate students in our newsletter!